


I Watched My Best Friend Leave

by Transistors



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-08 20:37:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14701803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Transistors/pseuds/Transistors
Summary: I watched as my best friend turned on me, with a swaying back, and I watched their shrinking scars upon an injured expanse of skin – and I watched my best friend leave.





	I Watched My Best Friend Leave

**Author's Note:**

> This story came to mind when I was walking last night

There has been a day, or maybe many a days, that go on by where I do not realize how a certain loneliness has given growth to I.

One day, a year or two ago, maybe three, I have watched my best friend turn their back on me – and I let them leave, no fuss, no questions asked. Maybe I should have tried, for even a split second, to reach out and know, first and foremost, why it is that they bare their soul to me; I can see every notch upon their back, the scars dragged down, but still, I watch their back sway, and they leave me be. They leave not with a kindly grin – they leave not with a mourner’s frown – they leave not with a conman’s smirk – yet they leave with a knowing gaze, eyes cast down for a second too many and I cannot bear to look at a single part of them when they face my way.

I let my them turn their back to me, giving me the first glimpse to a world I never could have understood if they are still around – a map spreads out on their skin, hidden not underneath cloth, and my traitor’s eyes can only focus upon the them that I cannot see.

Who is it that has taken a knife to my best friend’s back? A question unanswered, trailing in the air that follows after them as they walk away; with squared shoulders, an impossibly injured back, and a confidence that makes me take a few steps towards them – then step back, frozen in spot, and I watch. I watch the map on their skin retreat, shrinking with each step they take far away from me.

I have let my best friend walk away from me, no further words exchanged between us, no reasons given; a silence is what greets us, and now it shall be what parts us. Treachery holds no water here, and still I – I sit here, I wonder. I stall, and I wonder. I leave, and still, I wonder.

Who is it that my best friend truly is? I have never wanted one – there is no single desire, not one, to separate friends on a hierarchy that I have never once comprehended. I have no childhood friends – not anymore, now that my best friend has turned their back upon me and left me. I have had no need to desire a closer companionship, especially not one similar to my best friend – who is gone, but not truly dead.

It is only death, I feel, that shall truly separate me from the friend I never once asked for – and it is only death, I feel, that shall truly give to me a clarity that I have yet been able to gleam from life. All that comes with time, I tell myself, with words that never would have been heard had my best friend been here – with their scarred back, their hurt fingers, and their gaunt face.

Beleaguered has been my time with them, when our fingers would intertwine only for bones to crack – frailty has become their name, and whatever name that I have given prior lost to the sea we together drowned in.

It is a gift, something I shall share with some mild regrets, that my best friend has turned their back on me and walked away – in not rain, snow, or hail. In not the cold, or the windy. They have walked away on a sunny day, warm and welcoming, if not too bright and requiring sunglasses or caps – they wear a jacket and thick pants, they wear a cowl and gloves too, socks underneath thick boots, and they look as small as a twig before me.

And still I see the skin of their back when they leave; still I see the stabs and the injuries, and still I am left to wonder who my best friend truly is.

I think to my life, with them – with fuzzy memories and tears shed with them at my side, never once a comfort, but always a reason to cry even further. They slap away objects from my hands, they grab me by my shoulders to guide me away, and they sit – sweat-soaked and slick – up upon my bed, staring through me and towards my monitor, my diary, myself.

Relationships grow and wither, and I watch it all with my gone best friend – an apathy squirming in my belly, bulging at my throat, and escaping in rivers of bile back into my stomach. Perhaps, if I am lucky, my best friend shall accompany me and watch vileness spread into the toilet bowl, not a word said – perhaps I do all the speaking. Perhaps I am the reason they have left. Perhaps, or perhaps it is simple that I, too, am a liar.

More than once, people come to me to say: your best friend sounds exactly like you.

I have watched my best friend leave, not without the knowledge that they will return – of course they will, so integral they are, to I. But I have come to an acceptance; an agreement, not to them, not to my friends, not to my family, and only to myself. I say goodbye, finally now, to the best friend that has left me, the blame lifted up off both our shoulders, and I let not in a new friend.

Instead... a new ideal is let into my world, and I – and I let myself be free, for my best friend has left a loneliness behind as blessing to me.

A blessing for a chance of recovery.


End file.
